Terrorism's New (and Very Old) Face; It's Not the Kind of War the West Fights Well

By STEPHEN ENGELBERG

Published: September 12, 1998

In some ways, Osama bin Laden is a thoroughly modern terrorist. He announces his intentions on CNN, directs his worldwide financial network by satellite telephone and sends messages to his supporters in Saudi Arabia via cassette tapes.

Asked last year by a Western reporter what operations were planned next in his jihad, or holy war, against the United States, Mr. bin Laden replied: ''You'll see or hear about them in the media, God willing.''

But terrorism experts say that Mr. bin Laden's aims place him firmly in the traditions of an earlier epoch, a time when terrorism was used to strike a blow against apostasy rather than achieve specific goals like national independence.

The distinction is more than a quibble for theoreticians in the growing field of terrorism studies. American leaders have declared war on Mr. bin Laden and his brand of terrorism, a rhetorical flourish that leaves unanswered how the West intends to combat a millennial movement that flouts the rules of conventional warfare and has no evident state sponsor.

For much of the 20th century, bombings and assassinations have been the tools of ethnic groups fighting for their own nation-states. The tactics were undeniably brutal, and the consequences global. One of the most notable terrorist attacks of the century, the 1914 assassination of an Austro-Hungarian Archduke by a nationalist Serb, ignited World War I.

The aims of these groups could be politically delineated. Bosnian Serbs, for instance, wanted to escape Austro-Hungarian rule and join Serbia, a desire that re-emerged after the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991. The Irish were striving for independence from Britain, as were the Jews living in what was then Palestine. Disputes about land and power were subject to political negotiation, and for most of these groups, terror ultimately helped them prevail. As Walter Laqueur, a historian, noted in his 1987 book ''The Age of Terrorism,'' ''To succeed, terrorist demands have to be 'realistic' (i.e. limited in character).''

Mr. bin Laden's loosely organized Al Qaeda movement pursues goals far harder to define or satisfy. Experts say it is part of a significant trend in which terrorist groups espouse millennial or religious ideologies that transcend politics or national borders.

In his rambling 1997 interview with CNN, Mr. bin Laden said his jihad against the United States would conclude only when Washington withdrew from Saudi Arabia and ended its ''aggressive intervention against Muslims in the whole world.'' He invoked God and Islamic tradition, and reminded viewers that it was not permissible for non-Muslims to remain as protectors in Saudi Arabia. He makes clear that his targets include the Egyptian and Saudi Governments, deemed insufficiently devout.

''If you look at books written about terrorism 25 years ago, religion doesn't appear,'' Mr. Laqueur said. ''Statistics today show that more than half of terrorist activities are committed for religious or pseudo-religious reasons.''

Bruce Hoffman, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Fife, Scotland, said the ideology of Mr. bin Laden and other emerging Islamic groups harked backs to the earliest known forms of terrorism, when religion was the main justification for what another scholar has termed ''holy terror.''

From A.D. 66-73, a Jewish sect known as the Zealots took up arms against the Roman occupation, using daggers to slit the throats of Romans and of Jews who collaborated. Their rebellion had both religious and political overtones.

From 1090 to 1272, a Muslim Shia sect known as the Assassins fought to repel the Christian Crusaders with a campaign of murder intended to bring on a new millennium. The literal translation of ''assassin,'' hashish eater, refers to the acts of ''ritual intoxication'' undertaken by the warriors before their missions, Mr. Hoffman writes in his new book, ''Inside Terrorism'' (Columbia University Press, 1998).

Although there were scattered instances of fundamentalist, Islamic-inspired violence in the early 20th century, the issue gained international prominence only after the Iranian revolution brought a Shiite regime to power in 1979.

Iran began financing and arming Shiite proxies in Lebanon, and when the United States backed the Lebanese Government in that country's civil war, the groups fought back, bombing the American Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut and seizing hostages.

Mr. bin Laden's religiously justified program of violence echoes the public proclamations of those groups, with an important distinction: He is independently wealthy and operates from countries like Afghanistan or Albania, which have minimal governments at best. The Reagan Administration could negotiate with Iran; Mr. bin Laden answers to no government.

Mr. Hoffman noted that many of the major terrorist attacks of the 1990's were by groups without state sponsors and specific goals. These include the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center by Islamic radicals with ties to Mr. bin Laden and the 1995 attack on Tokyo's subways with nerve gas by a Japanese religious cult.